


Words

by Pi (Rhea)



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-23
Updated: 2011-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-26 11:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/282672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhea/pseuds/Pi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Kaylee wants to hear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words

Kaylee had wanted to hear Simon swear, the words would be exotic on his tongue like they weren't on hers. Hearing him say them would be exciting in it's difference, make Simon at once more human, and more distant. She hadn't thought that this would be what she wanted to hear. Kaylee's a mechanic she's used to things being rough and dirty, wriggling through tight spaces to find the missing connection, playing an engine till it sang and whirled under her fingers. In Kaylee's world it's the nitty gritty things that bring life. Simon doesn't bring life, he saves it. He moves cautiously and confidently. He uses a scalpel, not the pleading jiggling of fingers that was part intuition and part desperation to coax a ship through the next jump. Serenity's been Kaylee's body for years now. Somedays she thinks she was born here, just another part of the engine room. So it makes some sense to come full circle in her life when Simon walks up her gangway Kaylee feels the entire ship shiver into place, holding steady just behind her smile, a curl in the small of her back, a metal coil ready to be sprung.

It stays there, humming with electricity while Simon slides himself in, becomes part of the day to day bustle of Serenity, setting up his cool, blue, sanitized space in the infirmary. Kaylee's been there, half blind with the pain in her gut unable to think beyond fear, but somehow knowing if this is Simon's place and Simon is part of Serenity he will not let the engine die. To Kaylee this is his test, if she lives they will be bound to the ship together, just like Wash is to the pilot's seat and Zoe is to Wash and Mal is to the whole damn place. Sometimes Kaylee feels sorry for Jayne because while he hides his guns in Serenity's walls, she doesn't keep him safe. Jayne doesn't give the same way, but Kaylee can see that some days he tries, so she continues to hope.

Kaylee thinks that some day Serenity will find her even keel, her people spaced out like pawns on a chessboard, balanced in her rooms moving together to keep her in the sky. Kaylee thinks that with their new occupants they might be close. Hopes Simon will feel it, want to stay. And he does, at first it's bumpy and Kaylee has to smile harder to keep all the pieces moving but she knows it's right and if she turns it just so, and things even out again. And so here they are, back where she started, but it's Simon who has her pinned back against Serenity's quiet thrumming. Kaylee can feel the power of the engine in her back and it surges her forward, fingers in his hair pulling pushing, bringing him to her. And she thinks she was wrong to want him to curse. She may be warm with engine grease on her arms and patches on her knees, but Simon will be at home here, with her because he too brings himself with him wherever he goes. And the soft words that curl from his mouth when he pushes inside her will not be the words Kaylee has come to look for, to love, they will be words that set her on fire because they are beautiful. He will tell her how she feels like home, he will tell her that her thighs are like lilies, he will whisper praise to her hair and tell her how it reminds him the bright glint of copper and how she's worth so much more than that. His fingers will trace melodies on her spine as his words spin poetry, lush and ripe and glistening into a vibrant garden of sound, weaving past her closed eyes, cresting on the wave of release flowing through her, her back arching to meet him, her lips collecting the fall of words to her because she never wanted to hear him curse. She wanted to hear this.


End file.
